This article will contain spoilers for the Lightning Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Zelda's dungeons have always been great at making you feel truly lost in them. Many of them, such as A Link Between Worlds' magnificent seven-floored Ice Ruins, deftly entwine multiple floors, rooms, and lots and lots of doors, piling them on top of each other like a towering, claustrophobic labyrinth.
The Lightning Temple in Tears of the Kingdom not only fulfills those criteria, but offers a gratifying sense of fulfillment within its oppressive depths - a sense of dread that's familiar, yet also amplified thanks to its design.
The temple houses various batteries that power a sealed door in the center, allowing passage beyond. But finding the tools needed to activate these batteries is nothing short of a treasure hunt. Many platforms or gimmicks lie buried beneath layers of sand, hidden behind formidable walls, obscured by countless chambers and partitions—it's a confusing maze that's both dizzying and compelling.
To reach even a single battery, you have to navigate through narrow passageways littered with treacherous traps, dangerous ceilings that threaten to impale you, and fiery orbs that appear out of nowhere like those Naga fireballs in Thailand. All of it brings back the chilling atmosphere of Ocarina's haunting Shadow Temple, with its eerie surprises, jump-scares, and constant whispers that utter words of hate and doom.
It's a quintessential Zelda experience that stands in stark contrast to the game's gorgeous overworld, its playful six-storey design making it into a world of its own.
In classic Zelda fashion, the Lightning Temple forces you to second-guess every step and visual element by hiding its tools and pathways behind seemingly ordinary stones like a Sheikah magician. The walls and corridors themselves aren't playing fair either, constantly trying to squeeze and trap you. Even when you try to point the light beam sources–primarily used to solve puzzles and unlock doors–at their targets, revolving walls and lifelike structures prevent these rays from reaching their targets.
The other temples in Tears of the Kingdom–if you exclude their initial visual flair–feel lifeless by comparison and lack this constant engagement. The Lightning temple acts as a large, intricate puzzle or sequence, not just a macrocosm of smaller puzzles with simplistic 'two-steps-max' solutions (looking at you, Zora Domain Temple).
The Lightning temple requires you to connect multiple rays of light from different floors and rooms, bouncing them off mirrors to resolve all the loose threads in each puzzle. So in addition to these mini-puzzles, there's a macro-level puzzle structure that's as expansive and challenging as any of those floating islands in the overworld's sky.
But back my favourite aspect of the Lightning Temple: how foreboding it feels. Nothing is as it seems in here, heightening the unease no end, and I keep wondering if I'm going to end up buried in this tomb along with the constructs and Lady Riju (this temple's dedicated sage companion).
There are times when the desire to quit creeps in, but Riju's commentary on every trap and gimmick offers some much-needed levity. The other companions seem a bit tight-lipped in comparison, perhaps because the other temples just don't offer as many creepy surprises or concerns to chat about, or maybe it's because her presence just has that weight to it.
Raiju’s charisma and the light-heartedness against the asphyxiating temple constantly tosses me back and forth between fear and peace of mind. It's a finely balanced atmosphere that really speaks to me, screaming "We've gotta get out of this place!" while Riju reminds me that I have the courage to actually make this escape happen (provided I don’t run out of arrows of course, because not even Hyrule’s gods will save me if that happens).
In the Lightning Temple, I found a grand adventure that is sorely missing from the other temples and their puzzles. Perhaps I'm being swayed by a nostalgic longing for the classic Zelda temple blueprint, but I crave more of these condensed wonders in Tears' Hyrule, and so far I still can't find a temple that speaks to me as much as this one.